The Dauntless dive bomber sank, but its crew was fished unharmed from the sea.

“Chalk up another first for the Marines,” the signal officer said. “He lived to tell the tale!”

But as Mangrum noted in his letter, back luck seemed to follow O’Keefe. Near Guadalcanal, Japanese aircraft attacked the Long Island. Dashing to his battle station, O’Keefe slipped and fell. Sore and bruised, he had to persuade his superiors that he could still operate his Dauntless’ rudder pedal and brake, and fly with the rest of his squadron off the carrier.

He won the argument. The next day, Aug. 20, he and Mohan became two of the first American aviators to land at Guadalcanal’s recaptured air strip. “But,” Mangrum wrote, “it was two weeks before he could walk normally.”

On Guadalcanal, “normal” didn’t apply. The fliers landed at the airstrip, re-christened Henderson Field, without tents, extra parts or spare clothing. By night, they slept beneath planes’ wings. By day, they endured Japanese attacks by land and air. The men dined on pancakes for breakfast, lamb tongue patties for dinner and their imaginations for lunch.

“There weren’t any fat guys on Guadalcanal,” Mohan said.

Great courage

In less than a month, O’Keefe flew 29 combat missions. The 29th came on Sept. 14, when his squadron was ordered to bomb Japanese forces coming down The Slot, a sound that divides the Solomon Islands. While the other Dauntlesses took off, Mohan and Keefe couldn’t start their plane. By the time they were airborne, they were alone, flying without backup.

“I’ll tell you as a pilot,” Mike O’Keefe said, “that’s nuts. If he had encountered anything, he was a dead duck.”

But Arthur O’Keefe flew 250 miles, bombed his target and returned to Henderson Field.

“He landed the plane,” Mohan said, “and got out and I never saw him again. I heard he had a breakdown.”

A few days later, O’Keefe was flown off the island. While he was decorated for his service on Guadalcanal and would fight on Iwo Jima, O’Keefe’s “breakdown” cast a shadow across his military career.

What happened? On the day of that last flight from Guadalcanal, Mangrum reported, O’Keefe learned that one of his closest friends had died in action. “Add to this the weeks of strain, inadequate food, rest, hard flying and nervous exhaustion,” the squadron commander wrote. “Art O’Keefe was through — had to be evacuated. Even so, his was a story of great courage, and he was crushed that somehow ‘he had let the squadron down.’

“No such thing, as the rest of us well knew.”

Do we? How much do we know? How many more chances will we have to hear from these eyewitnesses to history?

“This is sort of your final opportunity to talk to people who were there,” Jackie O’Keefe said.

“This,” Mike said, sifting through a box of papers and photographs, seeking pieces to an old puzzle, “is all new to me.”